The present invention relates to the required timing resolution versus performance loss encountered when performing a search for a known transmitted signal sequence in a receiver by correlation. The search is performed in a 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) receiver during a propagation path search or random access channel (RACH) preamble detection.
The description of the invention focuses primarily on the frequency division duplex (FDD) version of a communication system. The invention, however, is applicable to almost all known sequence search in any communication system to search a known sent sequence in a received signal in the time domain.
There are several purposes why a sequence of symbols known to the receiver might be sent out from a transmitter such as channel estimation with respect to timing delay, amplitude and phase such as in a path search; signaling for (slotted) ALOHA multiple access collision detection and access granting such as with RACH preamble detection; and signaling of timing relations and even code group allocations, such as in a cell search.
Particularly in cases where lower level signaling is involved, there are usually several different known sequences that possibly can be sent out, and the signaling value is dependent on which one is found. Therefore, the search has to be performed over all available possible, or relevant, sequences. The present invention is applicable whether one sequence is searched for at a time or whether several different searches for different single sequences are performed in parallel or serially.
The exact receive timing of a known sequence is often not known. Unfortunately, this is exactly the parameter of interest, (e.g., for RACH preamble, if the distance and therefore the propagation latency between transmitter and receiver are not known). Additionally, the transmit timing could be completely unknown, such as in cell searching; or the reception of the known sequence could be in different replicas with respect to timing, amplitude and phase, but these parameters would then be of particular interest, such as in path searching.
In general, there is a certain time window when the sequence is expected to be received, which is constituted by some transmit timing relationship, (or simply the repetition rate if the sequence is repeatedly sent out on a regular basis). Therefore, on the receive side, a search for the sequence is made within the time window, typically by repeated correlation of the incoming received signal at consecutive instances in time followed by a search of maxima or threshold comparison in the output signal of this correlator. This operation of correlation at consecutive time instances can be viewed as finite impulse response (FIR) filtering of the incoming signal using the expected sequence as the coefficients for the FIR filter. This is in line with the idea of using a matched filter for detection.
In a 3GPP system, the known sequences of symbols are transmitted using a pulse shaping filter of the root-raised-cosine (RRC) type. On the receiver side, an RRC-type filter matched to this transmit pulse is used. The combination of both filters, (in time domain the convolution), is then of the raised-cosine (RC) type. FIG. 1 shows the impulse response of an RC filter in time domain, with a filter roll-off factor of 0.22 as used in 3GPP, and being normalized to 1.0 as the maximum amplitude. Amplitude magnitude in dB of the impulse response for the filter of FIG. 1, is shown in FIG. 2.
Obviously, if the transmit and receive timing for a symbol are fully aligned, the received signal amplitude is at maximum and for neighboring symbols spaced at integer multiples of the symbol duration Tc, the received signal is zero. This is one of the essential properties of these types of filters and is the reason why this type of filter is used in this application.
If the exact symbol timing is not known, and the reception is off by some timing offset, then the received signal amplitude is not at maximum any more. With the search of a known sequence with unknown timing, the exact symbol timing will typically not be met. Accordingly, this type of error almost always occurs.
If the search for a known sequence is performed spaced in time at Tc, then the maximum possible timing error is Tc/2, and the amplitude degradation resulting from this, as shown in FIG. 2, is about 4 dB, which is prohibitive for performance reasons. For a sequence search performed spaced at Tc/2, the maximum timing error is Tc/4, and the amplitude degradation 0.94 dB.
In view of the above, performing the full correlations at a rate of Tc/2 is the approach most widely seen in current approaches to the challenge of a known sequence search with unknown timing. However, this approach is not optimum with respect to the processing effort. The problem of performance degradation caused by timing mismatch has been solved in the prior art through the use of a simple over-sampling approach conducted at the start of the baseband processing chain. This approach requires a significant amount of additional hardware as compared with processing that does not employ over-sampling.
The present invention makes it possible to perform highly hardware demanding chip rate processing on a single-sample-per-chip rate as opposed to an over-sampled rate.
In order to cope with the possibility of a timing error, the present invention employs an FIR filter structure as an estimation filter which estimates those samples that have been skipped in the chip rate processing. Since the processing is performed on a symbol level and also since the FIR filter is very short with respect to its coefficient number, the additional hardware required is significantly lower than that required for performing over-sampling at the chip rate. The degradation of the detection performance is marginal to negligible even when employing FIR filter structures with a low number of taps, such filter structures being of simple design and are quite inexpensive to implement.
Thus, the present invention reduces the processing costs of the correlation process by close to 50% while at the same time achieving similar performance and at a reduced cost of the necessary hardware as compared with present day over-sampling techniques employed to deal with timing mismatch.